Tennessee Twilight: A Civil War Novel – Free Online Novel – Webnovel

Monday noon April 27, 1863

As Amanda wiped the last pane of glass, she noticed how far the sunlight had crept across the parlor floor. She hadn’t made the final preparations for dinner. Jonathan would be coming in soon, and he expected his plate to be on the table when he sat down. As Amanda crossed the center hall, she heard his footsteps on the back porch.

“It can’t be that late,” she mumbled.

Beyond the dining room, and through a narrow enclosed passageway, was the kitchen. It was sparsely furnished: a cupboard, a chest, and a large round table with six Windsor chairs in the corner. The floor was red brick.

Opposite the entry door was a huge brick fireplace. Pots and skillets hung from the ceiling. Dutch ovens sat around the perimeter of the hearth. The fireplace chamber had a spit for roasting meats and a crane that could be swung forward over the hearth to add or remove cooking vessels.

There was a new cast-iron cook stove in the corner. It was a status symbol that Jonathan felt they must have. Amanda used it to heat water, but she still cooked in the fireplace. Cooking on the stove would be quicker and easier, but she still burned everything she tried to cook on it, and she never had time to practice.

Barbé was frying cornbread at the stove. Rivers of perspiration oozed down her honey-brown face. She constantly mopped her forehead with a linen handkerchief. An immense white apron enveloped her squatty body from chin to shin.

In the sidewall of the fireplace, a door about a foot square opened into a brick oven. Amanda peered inside, praying that Jonathan’s hoecake wouldn’t be too brown for his liking. As she retrieved the cast-iron skillet, a wave of lightheadedness swept over her. She had been rushing around too much this morning, but she couldn’t slow down.

Jonathan insisted that his food be poured into serving bowls half an hour before mealtime, so it would be a comfortable temperature for eating, but the snap beans and meat were still boiling.

That morning, Amanda had put the beans and a piece of hog jowl into an iron kettle over the fire. She thought it was glorious to watch snap beans cook. They started out green as grass, smelling something like an old shoe. After two hours of cooking above the fire, they took on the hue of fresh sage leaves, and began to absorb the flavor of the smoked meat. Mid-morning, she buried in the broth some small potatoes and moved the kettle to the hearth. There they simmered slowly—the liquid barely rippling—for up to another three hours. She never stirred them, and they always came out tender and plump, taking on the brownish tint of the meat’s juices.

“Amanda,” came an impatient call from the dining room door. She had forgotten to set Jonathan’s place. He came in for dinner at precisely twenty-five minutes past twelve o’clock, washed his face and hands, combed his hair, and was seated at the dining table at exactly half past twelve.

“Yes, Jonathan,” Amanda said in apology, as she rushed to the cabinet for tableware, “I know I’m late.”

“What’s Juba doing here?” he asked.

“You’ve forgotten already? It’s the first day of spring-cleaning.”

“Why do you need Juba? You and Barbé and Luke did it last year.”

“Yes, and we nearly killed ourselves,” she said. “You seem to forget that your father is no longer here to help. Barbé and I can’t drag the heavy furniture and the large rugs around. We just can’t do it by ourselves anymore.”

“If you did it last year, you can do it this year.”

“Things were different then.” She paused, eyes averted. “I was different then,” she mumbled.

He glared at her. “Woman, you are the most exasperating human being ever born. To have to contend with you and the Confederate government on the same day is more than any man should have to endure!”

Amanda took his plate and hurried to the kitchen.

Luke and Juba had come in to eat dinner with Barbé in the kitchen.

“I hate when he talks to you like that,” Luke said loudly.

Amanda touched a forefinger to her lips. “Don’t make it worse than it is.”

“He used to try to hide it,” Barbé whispered, “but he doesn’t seem to care who hears him these days.”

Amanda realized it was foolish to think that she and Jonathan had hidden their battles, but she didn’t like Luke knowing so much about it.

“Eat,” she whispered, after she filled Jonathan’s plate from the bowls and platters on the table. “I’ll be right back.”

Jonathan was sitting at the dining table, a fork in his right hand, and a spoon in his left. It was his habit to shovel his food in with both utensils at once. After taking his first bite, he shrieked and covered his mouth. “Now you’ve made me burn my tongue,” he shouted as he slurped down a drink of water.

Obviously not enough to shut you up.

An hour or so after dinner, it was apparent that Juba was getting impatient. “How soon do you think we’ll be done here?” he asked. “I might be needed at the shop.”

“That’s fine, Juba,” Amanda said coolly. “Your work is more important than mine. At least you’re getting paid for it. Go on.”

“You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?” he said arrogantly. “Well, just watch me.” He went out the front door and slammed it so hard her figurines in the étagère rattled.

“Why’d you do that?” Barbé asked.

“I’m tired of begging people to help me,” Amanda said.

“We still have to carry the furniture in from the terrace,” Barbé said.

“I know. Luke and I will do it.”

“You’re doing crazy things these days,” Barbé said.

“I’m just so tired. My temper just gets the best of me sometimes.”

“I’ve never known you to have such a temper. You’re scaring me,” Barbé said.

“I’m scaring myself.”

Amanda cleaned Jonathan’s study that evening, just in time to prepare for supper. Their evening meals were simple: leftovers from dinner, potato salad from yesterday’s dinner, and some warm biscuits. Supper was soon on the table.

Soon after the war began, Jonathan had bought as much coffee, canned goods, and barrels of sugar and flour as he could find, knowing that the Union blockade of the Southern ports would soon make those items scarce. The last barrel of flour was almost gone, and she didn’t know where the next barrel would come from—or if it could be had.

Jonathan came to the dining room table for supper at half past six o’clock. Amanda, Luke, and Barbé ate in silence at the table in the kitchen. As soon as Luke was finished, he hurried out.

“I’ll be in the barn if you need me,” he called.

“A load of wood for the sitting room would be most appreciated,” Amanda yelled after him. He had stayed around the house that afternoon, willingly doing whatever she asked of him.

After she washed the supper dishes, Barbé retired to her little log cabin behind the house. Amanda fed the pigs and chickens. Back at the house, she carried her sewing basket to the sitting room. She must devote some time to the never-ending bag of mending: missing buttons, frayed hems, and ripped seams—clothing that she once would have donated to the church and bought new. But there was now no new to buy.

Just as she was about to drop heavily into her rocking chair in front of the fireplace, Amanda realized she had forgotten to pick the peas she planned to cook for tomorrow’s dinner. She pulled on a tattered shirt and an old straw hat that hung on a peg outside the back door. She hurried across the rear terrace.

After Bluesmoke was built, Charles had built a brick terrace between the back porch and the outbuildings, and he expanded it several times, until it surrounded the entire house. It connected the group of white buildings behind the house into a picturesque unit.

There was a springhouse, in which perishables were temporarily stored. The summer kitchen was used for heavy kitchen chores, such as canning, making soap and candles, and preserving meat at butchering time. The smokehouse was where they salted down and smoked meat, when they had meat. And there was the ubiquitous privy, which was beyond the terrace and connected to it by a white stone walk.

Amanda stopped at Jonathan’s office to ask if he would have Crocker plant potatoes in the back meadow. She certainly couldn’t afford to pay him. They would never have enough food to last through next winter if she didn’t coax him into planting something more than just the garden. She peeked inside, but Jonathan wasn’t there.

Where could he be?

Legal work hadn’t been particularly active of late, but it would be dark soon, and his drinking companions would arrive. She crossed the footbridge over Bottom Creek that ran behind Barbe’s cabin. A few yards downstream was a wider, sturdier bridge for horse and wagon traffic.

The kitchen garden was behind the two-story log house the Armstrongs used as a barn. All was quiet there. In the past, animals roamed the grounds as they pleased—ducks, chickens, goats, dogs, and cats. They were all gone now, stolen or killed. A few weeks earlier, Amanda had found their last dog with its throat cut, silenced by the same person who broke into the root cellar to steal food. Fortunately, the root cellar was empty.

Dew was already settling on the plants. Amanda squatted down between the rows of peas, pressing every pod, searching for just the right stage of ripeness. Unripe peas would add bitterness to the broth. She cradled the peas in her apron, just enough to simmer slowly in cornmeal broth, and to later add cornmeal dumplings.

She was moving toward the house when she heard voices. She sneaked up behind the barn. She could hear the voices more clearly there, but they weren’t coming from the barn, but across the way, at the stables. They had so few horses that the stables were no longer in use. There would be no reason for anyone to be in there.

The silliness of her skulking around in the half-light trying to eavesdrop on someone suddenly struck her as funny, and she chuckled. Maybe Luke did have a female friend, who had been keeping him away from home at night, and maybe she had come to see why he hadn’t called on her that evening.

A wide path of hard-packed earth ran between the buildings. Amanda retraced her steps to a point where she was no longer visible from the stables and crossed the path. She walked past the pigsty and the two-story henhouse, creeping as close to the stables as she dared.

“You promised,” a female voice said, obviously distraught. Amanda didn’t recognize the voice, but she immediately knew the male voice that spoke next.

“How crazy you are to come here!” Jonathan said harshly. “You must understand. Things with Amanda are still very delicate. The loss of her father is still affecting her deeply.”

“That excuse is wearing thin,” the female voice said. “Well over a year has passed since then.”

“Keep your voice down,” Jonathan whispered. “Emily, I—”

Emily? Amanda knew only one Emily. It couldn’t possibly be her.

Amada wanted to get a look at the female. She crept around to the rear doors, where there were narrow cracks in the weathered wooden boards. The female figure was only a few feet away, but the light was poor.

“I must go,” the female said abruptly. “Franklin will soon be home. If I’m not there, he’ll be suspicious.”

It was Emily Cuthbertson! Her friend—the only white woman she considered a friend. Emily’s back was to her, but Amanda could see the fine brown hair that created a halo of wisps around her head, no matter how much she brushed it, no matter how much dressing she applied to it. That was one of Emily’s feminine insecurities, another being her poor complexion. Pockmarks marred her cheeks, but she had beautiful green eyes.

“Since when do you care what he thinks?” Jonathan said.

“Well, obviously you don’t care anymore,” Emily whined.

Anymore?

“Emily, I’m sorry,” Jonathan said.

“Let me go,” she said fiercely, forcibly removing his hand from her arm.

“Did you hear something?” he asked suddenly. “I have to get you out of here.”

Amanda decided it was time to make her escape. She crouched down, almost crawling through the stiff vines of the grape arbor. She skirted the field, and stepped out into the path at the same time Jonathan did, his paramour now clutching his arm. Emily saw Amanda, and with a horrid gasp she ran back into the stables and threw the rear doors open. She raised an awful racket as she crashed through the grapevines, sobbing loudly all the way.

Jonathan stood there, staring at some point far beyond Amanda’s head. His face turned bright red, as if he had been in the sun all day, but Amanda didn’t see. She had already turned away.

What a wonderful time to encounter my husband and his lover—when I look like a complete frump in a soiled and tattered dress, with a most unattractive hat shoved on my head. Yes, appearances are so important in these situations. I’d feel much better if I were wearing a Sunday dress and a jaunty little hat.

“Mother, what happened?” Luke was leaning over Amanda. She was sitting on the floor of Jonathan’s study.

“Help me up,” she said, leaning heavily on his arm.

“What happened here?” he asked again. “I heard you screaming—things crashing.” He helped her sit down in the chair by the window. “I thought someone was hurting you.”

“Me screaming?” she asked, trying to remember.

Her hair was stuck to her face. She tried to push it back into its knot. Her hands worked quickly, pulling out and pushing in the pins.

“I don’t know,” she finally said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Help me, Luke,” she gasped, grabbing her chest. “I can’t breathe.”

“Take a deep breath, Mother,” he urged.

“I can’t.”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, like one would shake a baby when it loses its breath. At last, she took a full breath.

Luke clutched one of her hands in both of his. She felt his hands trembling.

“Oh, no,” she said, as memories came surging back.

“Did you do this?” he asked.

As she looked around the room, she saw that a flowerpot had been thrown against the wall. A glass kerosene lamp was in shards. Pictures of Jonathan’s ancestors lay shattered on the floor. His pipe rack had been pounded into the top of the desk, leaving ugly marks in the mahogany wood. The desk chair had been smashed into the window. Every pane in the lower sash was broken.

“Yes,” she said weakly.

It’s like watching someone else’s life.

“Why?”

“I was so damned angry I couldn’t help myself,” she said, and began to cry.

“Who were you angry at?”

“Your father,” she said softly. “I was thinking about the times we stayed up nights talking about our future together. I don’t know how things went so wrong.” She couldn’t tell him what she was really thinking about—Jonathan and Emily.

“Why do you and Father hate each other so much?”

“I don’t hate him,” she stammered, rubbing her eyes with both fists. “He exasperates me. It’s just the way old married folks behave sometimes, I guess.” She chuckled, trying to make light of it.

“You never tell me anything.“

“Oh, my, your father will be livid,” she whimpered, as she rubbed her hand across the blemishes on the desktop. “Look what I’ve done.”

“Wait,” Luke said excitedly, “I can fix this.”

“How?”

“Crocker knows woodworking. You should see the furniture he’s made for his house. He just finished a canopy bed out of oak wood for his littlest daughter, Pearl. It’s beautiful.”

“He’ll tell Jonathan,” she cried.

“Not if I ask him not to,” Luke said confidently. “In the meantime we’ll lock the door just in case Father decides to come in here.”

She touched a hand to her temple.

“You have a bump on your head,” he said.

What’s happening to me? A total emotional collapse can’t be much worse than this.

Luke helped her to her bedchamber. She brushed her teeth with a bit of sponge and homemade toothpaste, and slipped into a nightgown. She slid her weary body between the sheets, and prayed that sleep would overcome her.

***
Amanda knew when Jonathan was coming to bed, by his alcoholic shuffle. She listened to him climb the stairs and walk down the hall, clamoring around, bumping into walls. He had stayed at his office a long time after his companions left. Surely, he didn’t want to explain to her why he and Emily were together. That was fine. She didn’t want to hear it.

He flopped onto the bed with his clothes still on. And that’s the way he would find himself in the morning. She was tired of undressing him. She could almost taste the whiskey that exuded from him. His body oozed it from every pore. The smell sickened her. She knew he had begun to sip it all day long—she smelled it on his breath when he came to the house for dinner.

She waited until he began to snore, and then slowly slid out from under the covers, grabbed her slippers from the floor and her robe at the foot of the bed, and tiptoed down the stairs.

Tuesday morning, April 28, 1863

“So you’re down here again, Miss Mandy,” Barbé said.

“What?” Amanda was startled, and then realized that she was lying on the settee in the sitting room.

“You’re killing yourself going without your rest,” Barbé said patiently. “You hardly sleep in the bed anymore.”

Amanda rubbed her eyes, and held her throbbing head in her hands. “I’m fine,” she mumbled.

“So you say,” Barbé said, “but I ain’t believing it.”

Amanda tried to stretch the stiffness out of her limbs. When she sat up, she groaned and grabbed her lower back.

“See what I say,” Barbé said. “We got lots more cleaning to do today.”

“Don’t say that word.”

“And here you are, all worn out before we get started.”

“I know.” Amanda sighed. “When I think about all there’s left to do, I feel like running away from home.”

“Can I go with you?” Barbé asked.

Amanda groaned as Barbé helped her to her feet and held onto her while she took the first few steps. She felt like a mule had kicked her in the sacrum.

“It wouldn’t hurt Jonathan so much to let go of some of that precious money of his and hire us some help like Mr. Charles did when he wasn’t able to help,” Barbé said.

“You know that’s not going to happen.”

“Yes, I do, and it makes me mad,” Barbé replied. “I don’t know how much longer you and me can hold out taking care of this big old house by ourselves.”

Amanda enjoyed listening to Barbé talk, especially when she made two syllables out of such a simple word as “our.” Barbe’s mother was a third-generation resident of the Tidewater of coastal Virginia, and she carried the accent with her to southwestern Virginia. Barbé picked it up from her, and brought it to eastern Tennessee.

When Amanda entered the bedroom, Jonathan stirred, but he didn’t wake up

Shivering, she grabbed the clothes she had worn the day before—no need to put on fresh clothes until after she bathed. At the washstand, she splashed the ice-cold water on her face. Now she was awake!

She laid out on the chaise longue Jonathan’s clothes for the day: a loose-fitting black wool suit and vest, a white cotton shirt, suspenders, black socks, and a bow tie. Luke would clean his father’s shoes and bring them up later.

When she entered the kitchen, Barbé was cooking breakfast. Barbé had quickly become adept at cooking on the new wood-burning stove. She moved the pots and skillets around the top surface in an intricate routine: the eggs were too hot, the sausage was soggy, the oatmeal was getting lumpy—slap, bang, and shuffle—and the pans were interchanged.

A blaze was going in the fireplace, and a large kettle of water was heating. The batter for griddlecakes sat in a bowl on the table. Amanda began to mix the biscuit dough Barbé had measured out in a wooden tray.

Luke rushed in with cold milk from the springhouse and an armful of wood for the cook stove. Amanda sent him upstairs with a pitcher of hot water for his father’s bath.

There were no logs in the wood box beside the kitchen fireplace, and the fire needed to be stoked immediately. Amanda cursed under her breath as she hurried into the dining room and yelled for Luke to carry in some firewood from the woodpile behind the kitchen. When she returned to the kitchen, she saw that their farm hand, Crocker, had arrived and was feeding the fire and filling the wood box.

“Used up all that wood I brought in Sunday, did you?” he chuckled.

Crocker was a rude and crude backwoodsman. He had a round moon face. His jowls had begun to sag a bit, and they bounced when he laughed. His always wore overalls, and they were tattered, torn, and patched. Amanda didn’t know his age, but he looked to be at least sixty. Immediately after his first wife died, he married a young girl from the mountains, and continued to reproduce.

After Charles died, Jonathan hired Crocker to help around the house and to tend the fields. Since Jonathan hadn’t allowed Crocker to plant much this spring, they no longer needed him every day.

Of course, Crocker jumped at the chance to spend the morning repairing the mess she had made in the study. Amanda would have to pay him out of her own money for that job.

She caught Crocker and Luke laughing and joking with each other, making her even more suspicious about Luke and Crocker’s daughter.

Amanda followed Crocker out the rear kitchen door. “I hope my son isn’t spending so much time at your place because of that girl of yours—Lydia, isn’t that her name?”

“Yes,” he said, dragging the word out.

“I don’t want him around girls like her,” she said flatly.

“I’d say that’s up to him.”

“It’s certainly not for you to say!” Amanda shouted. “That’s up to his mother and father.”

“Then tell him,” the old man said, grinning. She wanted to slap his smart face.

After breakfast, Barbé and Amanda cleaned up the kitchen and did their usual morning chores. Then Amanda carried a pan of water to the ironing table and began to sprinkle the clothes Barbe had washed the day before.

“Let me do that,” Barbé stuttered, pulling at the clothes. “You can’t do it as good as I can.”

“It’s just everyday clothes,” Amanda said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter if there’s a wrinkle here and there.”

“It matters to me,” Barbé said.

“You make more work for yourself by being so perfect,” Amanda said, pulling one of Jonathan’s shirts from Barbe’s hands.

“I don’t care,” Barbé argued. “That’s the way I like it. I don’t want to do it at all if I can’t do it right!”

“We’ll never get done with the spring cleaning.”

“Go get your bath,” Barbé said, finally wresting the shirt from Amanda’s hands. “I’ll have this done in no time, then I’ll help you with the cleaning.”

I’m a horrible person, fighting with a woman who loves me so much—over laundry?

Amanda escaped to her room to bathe, standing on an oilcloth in front of the washbasin. At home, she wore calico dresses with tight-fitting bodices. She shoved the long sleeves up above her elbows. Her skirts were full, and hung in folds to the floor, with only a cotton petticoat and stockings underneath. Her skirts swished here and there as she rushed around the house, always in a hurry.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she told Barbé in the kitchen. “I’m so tired—I don’t recall ever being so tired.”

Since it was already late, Amanda decided to clean the library, and leave the larger dining room for the afternoon. Glass-fronted bookcases lined the walls of the library and held Charles’s book collection—everything from history to biographies to poetry. It should have been an easy room to clean, but she handled Charles’s books with extra care, for she knew how much he prized them.

Luke stuck his head into the library around eleven o’clock and winked. After a while, she slipped into the study, and was relieved to see that they had rubbed out the scratches on the desktop, replaced the window glass, repaired the chair and the gouge in the floor.

Saturday afternoon, Luke went riding with one of the neighbor boys. Barbe was with Juba at the crossroads, and Jonathan left for the Old Duck Tavern. He spent Saturday evenings there as a convenience for his clients, or so he said. She was glad to be rid of him. She had managed to avoid him since the incident with Emily.

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